The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  Nobody else in sight.

  Gun ready, I eased the door shut behind me.

  Alexei’s text had only told me to meet him in the lower level of the hospital. No room number. No details. Although this wasn’t a large facility I noted at least a dozen doors in this corridor.

  Rather than call his name I decided to start searching for him in the rooms closest to me and systematically work my way to the far end of the hall.

  The first door was to a radiology lab. I pressed it open, and as I was leaning to look inside, I heard a voice behind me in the hallway. “Patrick.”

  I spun, Glock raised. Alexei stood beside a door fifteen meters down the hall.

  “Hands where I can see them, Alexei.”

  He lifted his hands, showed me they were empty.

  “Where’s Kayla?”

  “I’d rather not talk here in the hall. We might get interrupted.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s safe.”

  Careful, Pat. This guy’s the real deal. He killed two people yesterday. “ Stay where you are.” I approached him warily, scanning the hallway for other movement in case he wasn’t alone and this was some kind of trap, but the hall appeared to be empty. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Bryan Ellory and to Bobby Clarke.”

  “The truck driver.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  Just a few paces away now, I motioned for him to back up. “Into the room and don’t make any sudden moves. I’m not having the best week, and shooting you would probably be good therapy.” Not something I was planning to do, but he didn’t know that and, honestly, it felt a little therapeutic just to say it.

  We entered the nondescript administrative office: a desk with a flat-screen monitor, an overstuffed bookshelf, a few chairs, a filing cabinet. I closed the door. “Turn around.”

  He complied.

  A common misconception among civilians, probably because of seeing too many cop movies and TV shows, is that you read someone his rights when you arrest him. That’s not true. You read him his rights before you question him back at the station.

  Mirandizing could wait for the moment.

  After talking with Trooper Wayland, I knew that Alexei had turned his back on him as requested, then attacked him. I wanted to see if Alexei would try the same thing on me. “Hands against the wall.”

  He placed his hands against the paneling.

  Attentive to the fact that he might go for my weapon, I holstered the Glock before frisking him. I found no knives, no guns, just a small handheld device that appeared to be a medical instrument, the very weapon Wayland had told me about.

  As I was removing it from Chekov’s pocket, he spun, lightning quick, leading with his left elbow and bringing his right arm over my shoulder to reach for the device, but I was ready. I shoved him backward, brought my forearm up, pinning his neck against the wall-with my other hand I swung the device up, planted the tip against the bone just below his left eye socket. “What’s this, Alexei?”

  It took him a moment to answer. “It’s a spring-loaded bone injection gun.” His Russian accent slipped into more of the sentence than usual, and I realized that might be his tell when he was under stress.

  “Sounds like it might hurt.”

  “It does.” He didn’t struggle. I thought I saw a flicker of admiration in his eyes. “You have quick reflexes, Agent Bowers.”

  “Where’s Kayla, Alexei?”

  “As I said, she’s safe.”

  I held him in place, locked eyes with him, didn’t look away. “So where do we go from here?”

  “You have the bone gun and a Glock, I have no weapons, so I suppose that’s up to you.”

  That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, that he still couldn’t take you out.

  “I’m tempted to bring you in right now,” I said.

  “Would you risk a woman’s life just to get an arrest?”

  I didn’t answer.

  His gaze flicked to the bone gun, and I felt a sense of assurance that he wasn’t going to chance moving abruptly and allowing it to engage. “I needed to know,” he said. “That’s why I went for it.”

  “The bone gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “You needed to know what?”

  “If you were as good as my sources tell me.”

  “What sources?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  Somewhere down the hallway I heard footsteps approaching the room. I hoped we weren’t going to be interrupted.

  After a moment, I released his neck and stepped back, still jacked on adrenaline and ready, ready, ready to respond if he made another move.

  Slipping the bone gun into my jacket pocket and gesturing toward the Glock, I said, “I’ll drop you if you try anything like that again.”

  The steps in the hallway came closer.

  Alexei rubbed his neck. “I believe you.”

  “Where are these people, the ones you say killed Ardis and-”

  But before I could finish my sentence, the door behind me flew open and Jake Vanderveld burst into the room with his weapon drawn. “Don’t move!” he shouted at Alexei. “Or you’re a dead man!”

  58

  “Jake,” I yelled, “lower your gun!”

  He ignored me, hollered to Chekov, “Hands away from your body!”

  “Easy, Jake,” I said. “He’s unarmed. Lower your weapon.”

  But Jake just leveled his gun at Alexei’s chest. “Hands up!” He was wound way too tight. “Now!”

  “Jake, stop.” I stepped between him and Alexei so that now his gun was pointed at me. “Listen to me. He’s got a woman. A hostage.”

  “What are you…?” My words finally registered. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Now lower your weapon.”

  Jake finally lowered his gun and yelled past me, at Alexei, “Where is she, you scumbag?”

  More footsteps in the hall. Hurried.

  “Who’s that?” I asked him.

  A small grin. “Backup.”

  No, no, no!

  Two state troopers muscled their way through the doorway, guns drawn. “Step back!” the larger man yelled at me.

  “I’m Agent Bowers. FBI!”

  “He’s with me,” Jake said.

  They accepted that and strode toward Alexei.

  Jake spoke to me, “Who’s this woman, Pat? Who are you talking about?”

  I made the mistake of looking his direction. “Her name is Kayla Tat-”

  But the two troopers must have recognized Alexei from the APB as the person who’d killed Deputy Ellory-a local man they undoubtably knew-because as soon as my back was turned, I heard the sound of someone being thrown to the floor. I spun and saw the two of them, expandable batons out, leaning over Alexei.

  “No!” I rushed to stop them but they still managed to land half a dozen brutal blows and kick him twice in the face and abdomen before I was able to pull them off.

  At last they both stood angrily by my side. Tense. Glowering.

  “He was resisting arrest,” the larger officer said to me. His badge read: H. Burlman. “You saw that, right?”

  “You touch him again and your career is over.” I turned to his partner. “Both of you. You understand?”

  The air in the room went wire-tight.

  Jake said nothing.

  Alexei lay at my feet, his face bloodied, studying the two officers. He hadn’t grunted or cried out in pain at all, and I imagined he was calculating what he might need to do to escape.

  Yesterday by the riverbank I’d seen him single-handedly support Bryan Ellory’s weight, and I guessed that if he’d wanted to, he could’ve made things a lot harder for these two state troopers just now.

  Burlman pulled out his steel handcuffs, and I realized that at this point there was no defusing the situation without bringing Alexei in.

  “I’ll get him.” I
took the cuffs, then knelt beside Alexei and drew his hands back to restrain him. I whispered to him, “I didn’t tell them. I came alone.”

  “I believe you,” he said quietly.

  “Alexei, where is Kayla?”

  “Safe.”

  “And the people who killed Lizzie and Ardis?”

  “Later.”

  “Is Donnie Pickron still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And that was all.

  Then the two troopers came forward and manhandled Alexei to his feet.

  “Easy.” I made it clear that I was not kidding around.

  As they led him into the hall, I glared at Jake, then smacked the paneling. “What are you doing here? There’s a woman’s life at stake, and we might have had a lead on where the Pickron family killers are!”

  “I didn’t know that. You were keeping us in the dark. That’s not right.”

  “In this case I didn’t have a choice.” I wanted to ask him how he’d found me, but I could deal with that later. “Alexei threatened to kill her if I told the team, and since he already murdered two people yesterday, I believed him.”

  Jake was quiet for a moment. “Is that how you knew Alexei’d killed the truck driver yesterday?”

  “Yes, it’s-”

  Suddenly I realized something: Alexei didn’t fight back when the troopers attacked him.

  He tested you.

  He tested you.

  Maybe he was testing them.

  I stepped away from Jake and caught up with the troopers in the hall, pulled aside Burlman, whose insignia told me he was a trooper first class, in this case the senior officer. “You need to really watch him.”

  “We got him.” He didn’t even look at me, and I could tell he was not attending to my words like he needed to.

  I snapped my fingers in front of his face, directed his eyes toward me. “Listen to me. This man is dangerous like you’ve never seen. If you turn your back on him, he will not think twice about killing you.”

  “We got him,” he said again.

  “I’m not sure you’re hearing what I’m saying.”

  “Like I said,” Burlman replied, spittle hanging from his lip, “we got him.”

  The troopers waited impatiently for me to wave them on, and finally I did. They headed toward the elevator.

  But almost immediately I began to have second thoughts.

  Right now Alexei was our only link to finding Kayla Tatum and our best bet for tracking down the Pickron family killers.

  She’s safe; he told you she was safe.

  Angela confirmed that Alexei doesn’t kill women or children.

  According to what he’d said, Alexei had been planning to search for the Pickron family killers with me, so if he was telling the truth that Kayla was safe and that he’d been willing to let her go, it seemed likely that he would’ve left her in a secure location where she could safely remain until he returned to free her or lead me to her.

  But I also had to consider the grim possibility that he might’ve been lying-and that Kayla might already be dead. In that case, he would simply want to escape.

  But then why would he have shown up here?

  Why ask for your help?

  I didn’t care that Alexei was cuffed and without his bone gun. In the last eight months he’d killed and then eluded capture in countries all over the world, and, handcuffed though he was, if he wanted to take out these two men on the way to the station I doubted they would be able to stop him.

  They were twenty meters from the elevator.

  Don’t leave him alone with them, Pat.

  Jake had joined me in the hall. “I’m going with them,” I told him.

  “We’ll both go.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I need you to initiate the search for Kayla Tatum. I’ll send one of the troopers back to help you.” I took out Lien-hua’s cell and emailed him Kayla’s DMV photo. “Her car isn’t here, so I’m wondering if Alexei stole someone else’s vehicle, maybe left hers at that person’s house. Follow up on every vehicle in the parking lot. Check all the trunks. Also, search this hospital room by room. Talk with Tait and get as many other officers as you can on this. Go to every house, every business within walking distance of the hospital. Work your way out from there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Fill in Natasha and Lien-hua. You know everything I do now.”

  The officers had made it to the elevator. “Hang on,” I called to them. “I’ll be right there.” Then I said to Jake, “By the way, how’d you find me?”

  “I tracked your location with the GPS from Lien-hua’s phone.”

  Not bad.

  “I didn’t know there was a woman who was…” He sounded defeated. “I should’ve trusted you, Pat.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He was quiet.

  “Shake it off. I need you on your A game. Are you good?”

  A small nod. “Yeah.”

  “All right.” I left for the elevator. “Get started looking for Kayla. I’m going to see what I can find out from Chekov.”

  59

  After sending the lower-ranking trooper inside to assist Jake, I joined Burlman and Alexei beside his cruiser.

  The rental car that Jake and I were using this week sat near Amber’s snowmobile. I was surprised Jake had been able to navigate the drifted road in front of the motel, but if a snowplow had arrived with food, the timing would’ve just barely worked out for him to arrive when he did.

  Burlman opened the door to the backseat, but as he grabbed Alexei’s collar to shove him in, I noticed something and said, “Wait!”

  I felt my left pocket.

  Empty.

  Unbelievable.

  Going to Alexei, I patted him down again and found the bone gun concealed along the back waistline of his jeans, a narrow, barely noticeable bulge hidden by his belt.

  I retrieved it. “It was when I cuffed you, wasn’t it? I leaned a little too close?”

  “You really are good, Agent Bowers.”

  So was he.

  “Get in.”

  After starting the cruiser, Burlman said to Alexei, “Bryan Ellory was a friend of mine.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Burlman’s jaw tensed. “I’m gonna kill you, you son of a-”

  “No, you’re not,” I corrected him. Then I faced Alexei, looking at him behind the police cage partition. It bothered me a little that I was about to ask him for his motive, but at the moment I was willing to try anything to get him talking. “I know you don’t want to hurt Kayla, that she’s your leverage for finding the other people. But why? What’s at stake here, Alexei?”

  “This isn’t the time to talk.”

  As Burlman pulled onto the road, he eyed Alexei in the rearview mirror. “You’ll have plenty of time to talk soon enough.”

  Alexei licked at some of the blood on his swollen lip.

  Burlman grinned. “Yeah, I know you felt that one. Give me five minutes alone with you and you’ll never forget it.”

  “I have no doubt,” Alexei replied, his voice even. Measured.

  “No more threats,” I told Burlman unambiguously. I didn’t even want to think about what Alexei Chekov could do to this guy if I left them alone for five minutes. “I won’t tell you again.”

  He clenched the steering wheel. “He resisted back there.”

  All three of us knew that wasn’t the case, but arguing right now wasn’t going to serve any useful purpose. I called Lien-hua to get an update. She told me Jake had already contacted her and brought her up to speed about Alexei and Kayla.

  “Windwalker just got here with the trail groomer.” She sounded exasperated at the long wait. “We’re on our way out the door now. You wanted me to check on Donnie-he’s worked at the sawmill since 2004, when the base closed. He left work on Thursday at lunchtime, no phone calls to him that morning before he did; that’s about all we know. I need to go. I’ll call you if I find anything at th
e ELF site.”

  “Talk to you soon,” I said.

  After she hung up, I tilted the rearview mirror so I could keep an eye on Alexei. And I watched him watch me as Burlman maneuvered us through the storm toward the sheriff’s department.

  60

  Tessa sighed.

  A few minutes ago the sports wrap-up show had ended and a reality show about some people who investigated supposedly haunted libraries had come on.

  How thrilling.

  As the library program began, Sean had left with Lien-hua and this big Native American guy on a snowmobile-trail-groomer thing.

  Amber was the one who’d suggested that Sean go along. “There’s nothing for you to do here right now anyway,” she’d told him. “And this’ll give me and Tessa a chance to get to know each other. A little girl time. Besides, you know those trails out there better than anyone. It might be a good way for you to help out.”

  Lien-hua hadn’t seemed too excited about the idea, but when Sean assured her that he did know the area and could help with whatever it was she was looking for, she finally gave in.

  Before they left, Lien-hua mentioned to Tessa that she was staying at the motel with this other agent named Farraday. “But”-she handed Tessa a keycard-“if you need some privacy, here’s the key to Patrick’s room. He’s in 106. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you hung out in there.”

  Tessa knew things were pretty serious between the two of them; she even had the impression Patrick might be thinking about proposing. But she was a little surprised Lien-hua had a key to his room. She might need to have a little talk with this stepfather of hers.

  Then they left.

  Everything was sort of in limbo until they got back, or at least until Patrick did.

  But it’d already been nearly two hours since he took off on the snowmobile, right after promising that he was gonna come back as soon as he could. Sure, Tessa knew he had a job to do, but still, she wished he would have at least touched base, sent her a text, something. A bunch of times she’d thought about calling or texting to see where he was, but then decided she didn’t want to seem too needy or puerile.

  Now she was alone with Amber in the motel room, and despite the time of day, she found herself eyeing the bed. Even after sleeping in until 11:00, for some reason she was already feeling drowsy.